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OPINION: Early voting shouldn’t be political football

No, the 2016 presidential campaign is not going to last forever. Believe it or not, people in Minnesota, New Jersey, South Dakota and Vermont will start voting by the end of this week. In total, 34 states have no-excuse early voting programs that allow anyone to cast a ballot at a physical location in their county. In three states, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, ballots automatically are mailed to registered voters — no request required.

No, the 2016 presidential campaign is not going to last forever. Believe it or not, people in Minnesota, New Jersey, South Dakota and Vermont will start voting by the end of this week. In total, 34 states have no-excuse early voting programs that allow anyone to cast a ballot at a physical location in their county. In three states, Colorado, Oregon and Washington, ballots automatically are mailed to registered voters — no request required.

And these programs are popular. Really popular. In 2012, about 45 million people — more than a third of voters — cast ballots before Election Day. In some states, a strong majority routinely vote early. But U.S. turnout is still embarrassingly low, even though we know of ways to drive it up.

Early voting enjoyed bipartisan support when it first emerged in Texas and other Western states in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but now it is a political football. Citing a need to cut election fraud, since 2011 many Republican-led legislatures have sought to reduce early voting offerings. The moves are widely viewed as a cynical ploy to reduce participation by young voters and racial and ethnic minorities, the backbone of the Democratic coalition in recent years. Some courts have found they are discriminatory.

Meanwhile, Democrats have continued to rally behind early voting. Hillary Clinton last year made a bold proposal to require at least 20 days of early voting in all states. Further, she called for evening and weekend hours nationwide, making voting easier for those with work commitments on a typical Tuesday.

There is no doubt that these initiatives would increase voting opportunities for millions of Americans. But if the goal is to increase the turnout rate, more steps are needed. Specifically, any plan, including Clinton’s, should include funding to help local governments offer sufficient early voting locations.

In research published last year in the Election Law Journal, I report that counties that had more early voting locations per capita had higher levels of voter participation in both 2008 and 2012. This effect is significant even when known predictors of turnout — race, ethnicity, income, education, competitiveness, same-day registration, voter ID restrictions and the like — are considered.

In counties with fewer than 200,000 voting-age residents, adding a new early voting location for every 1,000 voting-age residents was associated with a turnout spike of nearly 2.5 percentage points in 2012.

In counties with at least 200,000 voting-age residents, fewer sites per capita were needed to realize turnout gains; an additional site for every 14,000 residents predicted an additional 2.5 percentage points of turnout.

For some context, increasing national turnout by 2.5 percentage points would have equated to an additional 5.5 million voters in the 2012 election. I'd argue that a reform that paid a fraction of that dividend would be worthwhile.

The truth is that while states establish early voting programs, most allow counties to decide how to carry them out. This includes determining how many sites to offer, where to place those sites, and how to advertise them to voters. And many counties offer so few sites that they hardly increase voter convenience.

There is perhaps no better example than Los Angeles County, where one early voting location was tasked with serving more than 4 million registered voters in both 2008 and 2012. Other counties that are home to major cities did much better: Clark County, Nev., offered 88 sites in 2012; Cook County, Ill., offered 44 in 2008; andHarris County, Texas, offered 37 in 2011.

Adding enough early voting sites to produce a turnout surge would not be easy. But it is doable. Unfortunately, polling places are not free, and many county governments struggle to pay for early sites. Federal funds would be a wise use of resources that could dramatically expand opportunities for citizens to cast ballots at a time and place convenient for them.

Federal aid to increase early voting sites would not be unprecedented. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 — signed by President George W. Bush — provided money to help states upgrade their voting equipment.

While political realities in Congress and elsewhere make such a reform an uphill climb in the near future, election reform will have its time. And when it does, it’s important that we get it right.

Elliott Fullmer is an assistant professor of political science and director of the Washington Initiative at Randolph-Macon College. Follow him on Twitter@ElliottFullmer.